Director of Development

Blitt and Gaines PC•Vernon Hills, IL

About The Position

Blitt and Gaines, P.C. is a leading debt collection law firm with over 30 years of experience representing most of the nation’s largest financial institutions. With nine offices across Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, our attorneys and support teams deliver high-quality, compliant, and ethical legal services. At the heart of our firm are people—our clients, our employees, and the partnerships we build. Guided by our philosophy— Collect Compliantly. Litigate Ethically. Lead Effectively. Exceed Expectations. Expect Excellence —we uphold integrity, respect, and fairness in every interaction. Job Summary: The Director of Software Development is responsible for the strategic leadership, technical direction and operational management of the organization's Software Development, Quality Assurance and Data Operations functions. This is a hands-on technical leadership position requiring deep software engineering expertise, enterprise architecture experience and a proven ability to build and lead high-performing engineering organizations. The Director will evolve engineering standards, modern software development practices, AI-assisted development workflows and scalable technical architectures while partnering with executive leadership to align technology initiatives with business objectives. The Director oversees an engineering organization of approximately ten technical professionals consisting of five Software Developers, one Quality Assurance Analyst and a Data Operations Manager/Database Administrator who leads three Data Operations Specialists. The position is accountable for software engineering, database architecture, reporting platforms, application modernization, technical strategy, engineering productivity and the continuous improvement of software delivery processes.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent professional experience.
10+ years of enterprise software development experience.
3+ years leading software engineering teams.
Experience managing technical managers and cross-functional engineering organizations.
Demonstrated experience designing enterprise software architectures.
Strong understanding of Agile software delivery methodologies.
Excellent communication and leadership skills.
Software Engineering: C# .NET Framework / .NET ASP.NET Core Python RESTful API development SOLID Principles Design Patterns Microservices
Database Technologies: Microsoft SQL Server Stored Procedures Performance Tuning Database Design ETL Processes
Development Operations: Azure DevOps Azure Git CI/CD Agile / Scrum

Nice To Haves

Microsoft Azure
React
Infrastructure as Code
Event-driven architecture
Microsoft Graph API
OAuth / OpenID Connect / Microsoft Entra ID
AI-assisted development platforms (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, or similar)
Large Language Model integration and AI orchestration
Prompt engineering and AI workflow automation
Familiarity with Collection Master software
Experience in the litigation or collections industry
Experience with Azure SQL or other cloud-based database services
Experience supporting large-scale reporting or analytics platforms

Responsibilities

Define and execute the long-term software engineering strategy for the organization.
Lead architecture and technical design decisions for enterprise applications and services.
Establish engineering standards, coding guidelines, architectural principles and development best practices.
Balance delivery of business initiatives with reduction of technical debt and platform modernization.
Drive continuous improvement across engineering processes and software quality.
Serve as the organization's senior technical authority for software engineering.
Lead the design, development, testing, deployment and maintenance of enterprise software systems.
Review application architecture, database design, API design and implementation approaches.
Guide modernization initiatives involving legacy applications and platforms.
Develop scalable service-oriented and API-driven architectures.
Promote reusable software components and engineering consistency.
Ensure applications are secure, maintainable, scalable and supportable.
Provide strategic leadership for the organization's Data Operations function.
Partner with the Data Operations Manager to ensure reliable reporting, ETL processes, data synchronization and enterprise reporting platforms.
Oversee Microsoft SQL Server architecture, database performance and data integrity.
Support enterprise reporting initiatives utilizing Microsoft Power BI.
Ensure application architecture and database design remain aligned with long-term business needs.
Lead Agile software development using Azure DevOps.
Manage engineering roadmaps, sprint planning, backlog prioritization and release planning.
Establish engineering metrics around delivery, quality, stability, cycle time and operational performance.
Improve deployment automation and CI/CD pipelines.
Implement engineering governance including peer reviews, coding standards, release management and production change control.
Drive operational excellence through proactive monitoring, logging, observability and incident management.
Develop and implement an enterprise strategy for AI-assisted software development.
Evaluate, deploy and govern agentic AI coding platforms including Claude Code and other enterprise AI development tools.
Establish engineering standards for responsible AI-assisted code generation, automated code reviews, documentation generation, testing, refactoring and technical analysis.
Design secure workflows that integrate AI agents into the software development lifecycle while protecting intellectual property and sensitive business information.
Lead adoption of AI-powered engineering practices that improve developer productivity without compromising software quality, maintainability, or security.
Develop governance policies for AI-generated code, validation requirements and human review processes.
Evaluate emerging AI technologies and recommend adoption strategies that provide measurable business value.
Mentor engineering teams on effective prompt engineering, AI collaboration techniques and best practices for integrating agentic development into daily workflows.
Recruit, hire, mentor and retain high-performing engineering talent.
Build an engineering culture focused on accountability, technical excellence, collaboration and continuous improvement.
Develop future technical leaders within the organization.
Conduct performance management, career development, coaching and succession planning.
Promote collaboration between Development, Data Operations, Quality Assurance, Infrastructure and business stakeholders.
Partner with executive leadership to develop technology roadmaps.
Participate in strategic planning, budgeting, staffing and resource allocation.
Evaluate technology investments and software platforms.
Manage relationships with software vendors and technology partners.
Identify technical risks and implement mitigation strategies.
Communicate engineering initiatives and project status to executive leadership.